BAR MIGRATION AND DUNEFACE OSCILLATION ON DECADAL SCALES

Marcel J.F. Stive, Jorge Guillen, Michele Capobianco

Abstract

While structural erosion or accretion of a coastal stretch is of primary concern to coastal management, knowledge of coastline oscillations on larger time scales relative to the erosional or accretional trend would allow for a more efficient management practice. Our analysis of more than thirty years of observations of dune, beach and nearshore evolution reveals some of the typical oscillatory behaviour in time and space on a decadal scale. We have focused on the behaviour of the duneface and analyzed the possible relation between the duneface behaviour and that of the nearshore morphology. Amongst our results are the findings that the demeaned oscillatory duneface evolution on a decadal scale is not only correlated with the recurrence frequency of the migratory bar system, but also with a cumulative measure of episodic wave events.